The Farm

Some of my earliest memories are from being on the farm. http://www.mcmullinorchards.com  My first job was putting plastic lids on the 25lb buckets of tart cherries, after the sugar was poured in. I was about five years old. I had a stool to sit on, and the guys around me had mallets to pound the lids down. I remember talking, and laughing...passing "my job" off to someone else, while I'd run off getting into mischief. In fact, I did that so much after a few warnings from my Daddy, he'd had it with me. He caught me in the act, and my Momma was standing behind me. He said; "Sarah, you're fired!" I was crushed, and tears started streaming down my face. I'm sure my parents were trying hard not to laugh, but I thought the world was over. My Momma got me into our brown, wood paneled station wagon and I cried the whole way home. The next day when my brother and sister got up to go to the farm...I didn't get to go. I had to learn a lesson. That lasted for a few days, and after much begging, and pleading from me, I was given my job back. After sitting on my familiar blue stool, and holding my plastic lids...I didn't get off of that seat unless I was told to get off. The only thing I did was take a lick of sugar when no one was looking...and boy was it sweet!
Throughout the years I got to do all sorts of jobs with my Dad, Aunts, and Uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins. We cleaned bins, made brine, organized the tool room, swept the breezeway, burned the trash, made lids, sorted cherries, peaches, pears, nectarines, made boxes, cleaned every machine ever known to man that's on a farm, drove forklifts, tractors, shakers, big trucks, planted trees, pruned trees, picked up branches, watched things grow. While we were working on the farm, I was growing, and learning so much. Did I complain that I didn't get to go to all of girls camp? Or that I had to work on the 4th of July? Ya, I did, but you know what? I look back now, and I don't have any regrets...I am only grateful and happy that I was blessed to grow up working...I'm the lucky one.
One of my favorite times of year at the farm is when the fruit comes on. This year I was thrilled that I was well enough to work during the tart cherries. My sisters and I split a day shift. I'd try to work every other day if I felt well enough. If I wasn't able to my sister Bonnie, or Candi would come in for me. I cannot tell you how nice it was to work on the farm. The first day we started, I walked thru those doors, and I was home. the smell was so familiar, the tart cherry line, the people... I was home. I shed a few tears that day, and a few more after. So, so happy to be there, so grateful to work hard, to look upon the beautiful fruit my Dad,  his brothers and sisters worked so hard to cultivate. It's really an amazing thing to be apart of everything working, and coming together. It also brought me back to my Grandpa Mac checking my bucket of cherries, to see what kind of fruit I was sorting, Dennis taking my lunch, and getting to go into town for a burger and fries at Melts, driving the forklift so fast and running thru a huge garage door with it, & Grandpa Mac telling me I was driving like a "bat out of hell" and to slow down!  Rolling my sleeves up while making brine in the hot sun, singing and dancing to Madonna with my sister while making lids in the brine building...only making 10 in one day! I remember my Dad saying; "What? You only made 10 lids? What have you been doing all day?" What could we have said? We were making up dances to Madonna? He just let it go...It brought me back to the first time I got to sell at the Spanish Fork Farmers Market. I was barely 15, driving the blue van, with my sister Katie in the passenger seat. Hauling fresh fruit and setting it up on the library lawn...22 years later I'm still selling fruit, at that same market for my Dad, his brothers, and sisters. I look forward to it every year. I love it. I love the people. I love the relationships I've built. I love working side by side with my family. I've been given a gift...my heart is so full of love for this huge blessing I've been given...I'm so happy I was able to grow up on the farm.. it sure feels good to come home.